A HISTORY OF SUSSEX So then there is some evidence in favour of a Norman origin for the rape ; but we have still to consider the cases in which the word occurs in conjunction with a verb in the past tense apparently implying a reference to the time of King Edward, For instance, Sedlescombe 'pro una hida et iii virgis foris rapum se defendebat' (fo. 20). Here the allusion is clearly to the period before the Conquest, but its wording implies a contradiction, as land foris rapum is shown in the section of this article dealing with the fiscal side of the survey to have been exempt from that payment of geld which is implied in the phrase se defendebat. A possible explanation is that foris rapum is used merely in its technical sense of exempt from geld and applies only to the virgates, the translation being ' was assessed for one hide and (there were) three virgates exempt.' The case of Shelvestrode, however, where the Count of Mortain ' hab(et) i hidam que jacuit in rapo de Lewes. Nunc extra rapum est. Non geldat. Alnod tenuit de rege E.' (fo. zib) appears to be a distinct reference to the pre-Conquest existence of rapes, as does an entry concerning Sedlescombe, which sets out that one virgate held by Walter fitz Lambert ' nunquam geldavit et semper fuit foris rapum ' (fo. 20) ; while a puzzling phrase is found in connection with a manor in Lewes rape, — ' Ipsi villani sunt in rapo comitis Moritonii sed semper fuerunt extra rapum' (fo. 2'-jb). When we further find in the ancient customs of the borough of Lewes that a payment was due from the purchaser of a man ' in whatever place he may buy him within the rape,' it seems at least highly probable that the rape was of pre-Conquest institution.^ But whatever was the origin of the rapes as districts, as lordships they owed their existence to the Norman Conquest alone. With the exception of the Church's holdings the whole of each rape was held by a single Norman lord. As the possessions of the English landowners had straggled over several rapes and were intermixed with one another, the new system revolutionized the whole tenure of the county. The lord- ship of land was now determined, not by the manor to which it had belonged, but by the rape in which it lay. So rigidly was this system enforced by the breaking up of those manors which lay in two or more rapes that Domesday notes, as if an exception, of Fecamp's estate at Steyning : — ' In rapo de Harundel sunt xxxiii bids et dimidia et alias in rapo Willelmi de Braose, et tamen abbas tenet omnes modo.' For in the same column the church of Bosham, as an illustration of the rule, is recorded to have lost no less than forty-seven hides, which lay in the distant rape of William de Warenne. The second remarkable feature of the Sussex survey is connected with the pre-Conquest manors in the county. The exact significance of the term 'manor' as used in Domesday has been the subject of much debate and confusion, due in part at least to the endeavour to tie the ' The origin of the rapes was discussed in vol. i. of the Archceological Review ; Mr. F. E. Sawyer arguing for their introduction by the Normans (pp. S4-9), while Sir Henry Howorth and Mr. Round supported the opposite view (pp. 229-30). 354
